


Dreams May Come (Or Go)

by plumadesatada



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Death, Depression, M/M, mention of underage non-con, mentions of torture, preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-16
Updated: 2012-09-16
Packaged: 2017-11-14 08:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/513452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumadesatada/pseuds/plumadesatada
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of Tony's traumatic memories has always been haunting his dreams. That's not okay, but it's habit by now, and he's made his peace (sort of) with it. This night, there is something else haunting his dreams. Or someone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams May Come (Or Go)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of a session of rp with [brigadier-erin-lightning](http://www.fanfiction.net/~brigadiererinlightning), who played Tony. The starter was his/hers. _I_ was his/hers. Really, s/he would make  _anyone_ look good. YOU PWN, ERIN.
> 
> Um. Gets a _tiny bit_ emotional at the end. Please let me know if it is too much!

It was raining. Then again, in Tony's mind, it was always fucking raining. He was sitting on a porch swing he must have loved as a child. The soft brown eyes of his thirty-five year old self stared out across the yard; they were distant, isolated. The swing creaked. Voices from within the house; his parents yelling, ghosts of the past that linger on in memory. His mother had always wanted him to be raised a "normal" child; he honestly had never known what that meant. Another creak. The phantom pain of a bruise that had once been on his cheek, the bane of the gifted child in the ordinary school who daily inspired the ire of those less talented. His fingers brush against the spot, remembering.

A melancholy silence. He wonders if this is a dream, or perhaps a nightmare, and then he wonders if he will ever wake up again.

"Well, this is bleaker than I expected," came a voice from beside Tony, and then, bit by bit like the Chesire cat, Loki faded into existence in the empty place next to him.

A hand reached up and Tony pressed his fingertips against his temple, unsure of whether to laugh or to cry. Because a visit from the slippery bastard sitting beside him was just what he needed, here in the most vulnerable of places, here in one of the many dark nights of his soul, and good God, what if this was a dream, and what if he woke up in Afghanistan five minutes from now? Would he ask—would he beg—for Loki to hold his hand as the bone was drilled away so the battery could be placed? Or, maybe, he thought with relief, Loki too was just an illusion. Whatever the case, the impulse to laugh won out eventually and he chuckled, low, mirthless, the sound accented by the decaying screech of the swing. "Of course," he said, bitter, "of course you'd come. The fucking diva has to invade even my dreams now – what, chasing me up and down 5th Ave with the glowstick of destiny isn't enough for you anymore? Thought you'd make a house call to my head?"

"Do not flatter yourself, Anthony Stark," Loki said idly and held onto the railing of the swing. He pushed at the floor with his feet, increasing the pendular motion, and relaxed against the backrest, not even looking at Tony. "You are not worthy of Loki's visit. I am merely a figment of your imagination," he lied. Stark was strange; most humans were not so self aware when they dreamed to tell that a particular image had been induced by an external force, but Stark had known instantly that the Loki in his dream was not a dream, but Loki instead.

"Bullshit." For a minute, he considered pinching the other. That was how you could tell if someone was real or not, wasn't it? But then a crash from behind them made him flinch as the inevitable end of the argument inside drew closer. 

Shrieking. The slam of a door. Then another one. And a small boy, familiar, running as fast as his legs could carry him down the porch. A hand reached up, brushed his soaking chestnut locks from eyes that were tired, far too tired for someone of Tony Stark's age. Droplets ran down his cheeks, almost as if they were tears, though by _no means_ were they. "Well," Tony said, resigning himself to the God's presence – as if he had any other choice. "Welcome to my own little piece of friggin' paradise. What do you think? Next Christmas, everyone will want one." It occurs to him, most likely a second too late, that Loki probably has no idea what Christmas is.

The boy ran and across the field that lay below, heading toward the woods at the far end as the rain continued to fall. For all he looked like Stark would as a child, Loki still had a soft spot for sad children. From his place in the swing, he fashioned from dream-mist a coat around the little frame, but the boy took notice. Such was the nature of ghosts and memories, and ghosts of memories.

"Hmmm. A bit grey for my tastes," Loki answered at length. And it was: the dreamscape around him was washed of color, unsaturated. The bricks of the house were grey-red; the grass, grey-green; the sky, grey-black. He waved his hands, giving the world splotches of color that spread until they covered everything; even the sky cleared of clouds, though the rain kept falling, forming itself from nowhere, permeating everywhere. "Is this your childhood home?" he asked, finally turning to look at Tony.

Tony looked out across the field, watched as the coat materialized around the child, as the sky brightened, as the grass became a sort of washed-over green, still incorrect, still lacking detail, like a water-color paintbrush gracelessly ran across the canvas drawing of a childhood that Tony had tried for so long to forget. His head snapped sideways, casting a furtive glance at Loki; he hadn't been expecting something like this. Was this...kindness? Or was it simply that the God had grown bored and was amusing himself by perverting the state of Tony's dreams? Even as the color began to bleed away, diluted by the rain, his hand reached over, brushing Loki's, but not holding it—oh, God, no—before retracting. 

"Thank you," he said, though how much of it he meant was uncertain and he quickly changed the subject, shrugging. "Yeah. One of them; the bad one, obviously." Below, the boy vanished into the trees. Tony's heart caught in his throat for a second, but he exhaled in a tight breath, hoping Loki would not see.

But Loki saw. Of course he saw. He wondered briefly what would happen to that boy, what had Stark breathing so anxiously. He decided he didn't want to know: if it was nothing, then he needn't worry; if it was something, then he didn't care—didn't want to care. "You had several?" he asked instead, keeping his mind away from the memory of the boy. It didn't matter, he scolded himself, not any more. It had already happened.

Tony knew how the dream played out. He pulled his legs up onto the swing, pressing his them to his chest and folding his arms around them, his head coming to rest against his knees. "Too many," he replied, with a little laugh, though it was uneasy. His hands gripped tighter, but he kept his voice light, level, steady. "This one was the first. But then, New York, California, the summer home in Florida, another in Milan, just in case, God forbid, the first one gets hit by a hurricane or something. And one in Portland."

And Loki understood. "I believe then the word you meant was 'house', then, not home," he said. Then he realized his words could be misunderstood as intended to hurt and also, for some reason that escaped him, that he didn't want to hurt Stark. (Maybe it was that he kept seeing the child running in the rain, alone, when he looked at the grown man; maybe it was that Loki didn't kick a man when he was down if he didn't want to end him.) But he knew what it was like to have no home. He knew too well. "What is better, do you think? To have a home and later learn it was never really your home, or to never have had one?" he asked, his voice as grey as the world around them. That too sounded hurtful.

And Tony was in no mood for insults. With the last vestiges of a broken pride, he snapped, irritable, "Fuck you."

"No, thank you. But it's nice of you to offer," Loki countered, pretending to laugh. (Misdirection, lies, all the same thing. It was all magic tricks to him.)

Time passed in silence. He made the swing sway again, for lack of anything to do. He had expected Stark to ask him how he had escaped—he hadn't—or why he was here, why him out of everyone else—why not?—but Stark was too focused on his own misery to do anything else, it seemed. 

(Too focused on the rain to notice the color.)

Wasn't Tony just the picture of self-obsession? It must have occurred to him that he made a damn terrible host. But then, if so, Loki could just up and spirit himself away from here. Tony, however, did not have that luxury. Whether he liked it or not, he had to stay until the bitter end. 

The front door slammed, at length. And a woman, tall, fragile, and hauntingly beautiful ran down the stairs. Her lips moved, but no sound came from them, and she was just as gray as everything else. Finally, as the woman ran off into the woods, Tony whispered, low, figuring Loki might as well know, "She'll be gone for a while. And then the ambulance will come – doctors." His voice cracked, and he shook his head, not intending to say anything more on the matter. His chest felt tight. "If you don't... if you don't want to watch, you don't have to be here. I wouldn't. But then, you get off on other people in pain, don't you?"

"Whatever gave you that idea?" he settles on, because, truly, he does not. He only relishes the pain and humiliation he engineers for those who wrong him him or his—no, just him, there’s nothing and no one he considers "his" anymore—not on the suffering and strife that misfortune brings her victims. He wonders how often Stark dreams this, but it's not his place to know. Does she die, Loki wonders, does she die looking for her child in the rain? If he asks, he'll make Stark relieve his deepest pain needlessly; if he doesn't, he'll find out by staying. And he has nowhere else to go. Stark was the only one whose dreams he could walk into at that moment, weak as Loki was, open and vulnerable as Stark was. If he stays, it will be because he would rather keep Stark company.

A hoarse laugh, one that is biting, angry, "Oh, gee, I don't know, maybe it was the part where you _killed_ eighty Shield agents, stabbed your brother, but not before throwing him out of the ship, threatened Natasha – wasn't there something about an eyeball in Germany…? And, oh yes, let's not forget about Phil, who you ran through with a spear. All in all, that list seems pretty sadistic to me." But as soon as he said it, he kind of felt a bit bad, just a twinge in his heart, because Loki's voice was soft now, and he didn't seem to be insulting him; that, and Tony was utterly terrified of being left here alone. And, as he stole a sideways glance, he could see just how _tired_ Loki is, how the weariness stole across his face and there, right under his right eye, whether he knew it or not, was a single wrinkle, a line that shouldn't have been on the perfect, unmarred face of a God – a realization dawning on Tony that maybe, just maybe Loki felt as shitty as he did. "I'm sorry," he said, though it was said with some difficulty. He never thought he'd be apologizing to Reindeer Games of all people. "I—are you okay?" he asked, unsure of what else to say, but sensing that something was wrong.

‘ _Finally he notices,_ ’ thought Loki. "No, I am not," he said simply, declining any sort of explanation unless the mortal dared to ask. (Would he dare?) "And there is a difference between enjoying other's pain and causing it to achieve my aims." He realized he was tense—has tensed at Stark's unexpected explosion—and forced himself to relax, leaning on his swingmate, sharing what little warmth he could offer.

Loki's skin was cool against his, colder even then the rain that had soaked through his t-shirt by now, and the sudden touch made him shiver, but at the same time made his walls rise up again, made him wary, even as—was it possible?—he felt a tinge of concern for the wayward prince. And awkward emotions grappled in his chest. He was Tony Stark. He was the heartless bastard, the volatile one, the one who didn't know how to deal with people. So why in the hell had Loki come to him? It just didn't make sense. What did he expect Tony to say? ‘ _I'm sorry that you got what you deserved after blowing up eight city blocks, trying to kill my friends, and chucking me out a window?_ ’ A little sigh. "Let's hear it," he said, trying not to sound like the sarcastic asshole he always came off as. "I mean, you're here. I expect you want to talk about it. And it's not like I have anything better to do." ‘… _than watch everything I love fall to pieces_ ’, he finished, in his head.

"There is nothing to say," Loki lied, "I committed my crimes and now I am paying for them, as it has always been." Odin had him tied to a rock by the entrails of one of Loki's children, who was being kept alive so that the guts would not rot and fall apart, while corrosive venom was dripped on him by an enormous snake. His magic had been bound by his promise: Loki would stay there for one whole revolution of Asgard around its star, instead of forever, as would have been the case if he had elected to keep his magic. 

(This is how Asgard does crime prevention: leaving her sons too terrified of the punishment to even consider committing the crime.)

But Loki had learnt to meditate and project his mind outside his body before he had learned magic, and after falling between worlds, the paths of Yggdrasil were wide open to him. As soon as he had felt the poison eating away at this face, he had escaped, haunting the dreams of those he had known before, going from dream to dream, stealing energy from their owners' sleep to sustain himself, lest his soul dissolve into thin air and he be lost forever, his body a living husk of could-have-beens.

(He was eating Stark's dream even now, by being in it. Stark would never dream of this again.)

Tony tried not to laugh. Really tried. It was impossible to imagine the God of Mischief rotting away in a prison cell somewhere. Wasn't that why he had all his fancy illusions? And it had just been one city. Sure, Tony was pissed as hell because it was _his_ city, but the Asgardians, from what he understood, were conquerors. If anything, he imagined them putting Loki in the stocks and jeering and laughing at his failed attempt at a hostile takeover. "Please, _you_ , pay for your crimes? Hell, Princess, it looks more like you're escaping them to me. Though, I mean, rusty porch swings and angry parents are the new Alcatraz."

Loki felt the burn of sudden fury in his chest, but swallowed it down. He made himself more comfortable against Stark, putting Stark's arm around his shoulders and settling his head on Stark's shoulder, burrowing against him. A lie, a bluff. He wanted to kill Stark, to smash him against the ground repeatedly— _let us find out how you liked it_ —to hang him by the neck from his own entrails and make him swing around. "I am indeed," he smiled his pretend smile – the one that looked the most genuine. "Does it burn you, though, that they are punishing me for something else entirely?" Sometimes it was the truth that hurt most. "That invading your puny realm with the intent to conquer it didn't even earn me a slap on wrist?" 

Tony didn't miss a beat. "I could fix that for you," he said, the serious, superhero voice kicking in, a little bit of color returning to his face. A little touch of anger colored his cheeks. 

Loki answered by kissing Stark's stubbly cheek in a poisonous mockery affection, intent on disgusting him, unsettling him. 

It did the trick and Tony jerked to the side, his eyes wide, like a deer caught in headlights. The place where Loki's lips had touched burned cold, and his hand lifted and pressed against it, confusion dancing across his irises. "What are you...? What the fuck was that, Ice Queen?" Now that he looked at him, he thought to himself  ' _Uh-oh_ '. It took a faker to know a faker. And that smile had not been so much happy, or friendly, as it had been dangerous, like a jackal's. Tony wasn't terrified – of course not, after all, it wasn’t like he didn't have the suit nearby or – well, shit. ‘ _At least_ ’, he thought, ‘ _if you die in a dream, then you just wake up. Right?’_

Loki pulled away to stare at Stark, trying to discern whether the man had meant that as Loki thought he had meant, or if he had stumbled onto the perfect insult by accident. ‘ _Well, well, well,_ ’ he smiled dangerously, wickedly, ‘ _this man sure know how to stick his foot in it._ ’ Wouldn't Tony Stark want to know just how close to home he had hit?

Loki spelled his self-image into that of his jotün form. Not a glamour, not a spell; while his physical body was a jotün turned Asgardian, his psychical body, the way he saw himself, had always been Asgardian. (Thus the dissonance. Thus the conflict.) He put his face in Stark's personal space and smiled sharply – his smile and his wit were the only sharp things he carried into dreams, and really, they were all the weapons he needed. "Ice _king_ , actually," he whispered, his breath on Tony's face cold like the blizzards of Jotünheim.

He used his control over the dream-mist to create a little spot of his native soil right there. For a moment, the ground was ice and the air was dry and sharp—like his smile—and trees froze and the land was _dead_. Then he let go of the illusion and the snowfall turned back to rainfall, but there was frost on Stark's eyebrows and hair, and he was shivering, lips blue.

It all happened so damned fast for Tony. Loki's skin was bright blue, his eyes as red as blood, those teeth sharp, the ground cold, Tony freezing – and then Stark, with a muffled cry, tumbled over the arm of the porch swing and landed with a dull thud on the wood of the porch, his hands reaching up to dust the frost off of himself, to brush himself off so that the fall wasn't (so) humiliating. There was Loki, and Tony could practically feel the cold billowing off him. It was like standing next to fucking Antarctica, if Antarctica was in a pissy mood and had a wicked smile. ‘ _Right. Adopted_.’ To his credit, his face might have blanked for a second, but as he stood, he forced himself to think—really use that brain of his—to try not to let Loki see he'd gotten the best of him. And what came out was: "I didn't know you were in the Blue Man Group. Neat."

Loki didn't get Stark's Midgardian references, but he recognized pointless babble when he heard it. He snorted. So all it took to shut him up was to surprise-flash-freeze him? He chuckled, and then took another glance and Stark. Seeing him stiff, wide-eyed and white with frost, waiting for Loki's move warily, set him off again and again, until he was laughing and his stomach hurt and he needed to hold onto the backrest of the swing so as not to fall off and land on his skinny ass as well. "At least, haha, at least you had a soft, he, landing," he managed between breathless bursts of laughter, gesturing in the general direction of Stark's own—certainly not skinny—ass.

Ah, good old-fashioned mischief. How he had missed it.

Indignation, but it fell away into the quirk of a smirk, the corner of Stark's lip turning up. Two could play at this game, and while Tony Stark was no God, he _was_ a master of mischief and the bane of the Avengers Tower. And he knew this dream, and this house, better than anyone. He chuckled right along with Loki, even as his hand reached up, swiftly and skillfully, and extracted a single bolt from the chain holding the swing up. CRASH! The whole thing came tumbling down to the porch with a loud commotion, falling off the porch and throwing Loki onto his ass on the floor. And Tony burst out in real, true laughter, not even noticing as the color returned to his paled flesh, as the rain let up just a little, as light permeated the shadows of the reverie.

The fall just set Loki off again into a fit of chuckles, but he didn't even move from his spot. Managing to school his face into an expressionless blank, he simply stretched out his legs on the floor, crossing them at the ankles, and laid back, crossing his arms behind his head and using them as a pillow, acting as if it was the most comfortable spot in the world. As if he had completely meant to end up down there and Stark’s actions were just part of his master plan. He raised an eyebrow at Stark and gave him a taunting smirk, silently asking, _'is this the best you can do?_ '

And then Tony did something that surprised even him, and why? Because he _always_ got the last laugh, even if it meant doing things that he wasn't quite sure he would approve of. Awake him, at least. Sleeping him could do whatever the fuck he wanted as far as he was concerned – this was _his_ dream after all, wasn't it? And in his dream, he took two quick steps toward the God, dropped down, slid his legs up on either side of him, straddling his frozen hips, and his lips, burning, ravenous, locked onto Loki's even as a hand pressed the God's collarbone into the ground so that he could not escape. He pulled away, the tip of his tongue brushing over Loki's lips, tasting the frost that seemed to be infused in them, and then rolled over onto his back beside him, stretching out just as lazily. A laugh, short. "Have to admit, though. This is a lot more comfortable. Should have knocked it down years ago."

They shared a comfortable silence for a while. Loki smiled at the porch ceiling, enjoying Stark's companionable presence. He didn't comment on the kiss—though he had to wonder, why did Stark taste of metal and coconut?—knowing it had been just Stark's way of one-upping him. He noticed that the whole surroundings seemed sharper, suddenly suffused with color, and he also didn't mention that, not wanting to bring his companion—for that was what he was now: a companion—into his gloomy mood again.

The silence was nice. Hell, it even beat some of Tony’s waking hours. Some of the darkness had gone from the place, gave it a whole new life. And that kiss. He wasn't ever going to think about that again. Though, for all of a few minutes, he could think of nothing but, and what that strange scent was – like flower blossoms, but darker, more subtle. He closed his eyes, savoring the moment.

(They needn't have bothered. It was bound to be ruined soon.)

The ambulance siren startled them soon, making Tony jump. With a groan, he shoved the palms of his hands against his eyes. Why? Why the same fucking memory, every fucking night? "I hate this part," he muttered, even as he could see the flashes of red through the gaps between his fingers—even with his eyes closed—as the ambulance drove to the edge of the forest and paramedics swarmed out of it. The only thing he had to be thankful for was their distance from the scene, though he knew that he could go closer and he half-prayed Loki wouldn't get the inclination to, because that was a sight Tony had only been able to relive the first night. 

(And then, when he had woken up, angry, slamming his fist into his pillow in frustration, even a bottle of scotch and twice the adequate dosage of Adapin hadn't been able to shake the guilt, the hurt, of the memory.)

Loki sat up, curious. He glanced at the way the people in white had gone, and then at Stark's face. He saw him cover his eyes, like a scared child— _if I can't see it, it can't see me—_ like Loki had done when he himself was a boy, hiding from every noise in his room, praying to Yggdrasil and Auðumla that it wasn't a jotün, coming to eat him. It was more than denial, more than terror. "Stark," he said softly, prying his hands from his face and raising him until he was sitting, facing Loki. Holding him steady— _I'm your rock, hold on to me, I’ll keep you grounded_ —by the shoulders, Loki looked into his eyes— _keep your eyes fixed on me, don’t look away, look at me_ —and asked, "what happens next?"

(The sky darkened, heavy with stormclouds.)

Tony's hands fell aside; his eyes met Loki's, their dark brown gaze steeled against his tempestuous emotions. Everything about him was tense, defensive, even the voice that asked, coldly, "Why do you want to know?" It didn't make any sense. The God shouldn't care about something like this. And yet, here he was, holding Tony in ironically the same way his mother once had when he had been young and innocent and terrified of the monsters that lurked under the bed, with those eyes that captured his and the firm grip that wouldn't let him look away.

"To know when it's over," Loki answered, face dead serious. "Look. I left my body behind, letting it deal with the punishment. _I_ can't. I'll go mad if I stay more than a few hours. So I leave, in spirit, and I eat dreams to sustain myself away from my body." He saw the light of understanding in Stark's eyes. "Do you see? This is the last time you have this dream, if you let it play out. If you let me stay to see it. But I need to know when to stop taking." 

He saw the man debate it in his head, and rubbed circles with his thumbs encouragingly. He wished someone could take _his_ dreams away, but here, now, he could do it for someone else.

Tony, aghast, simply stared at him, mouth slightly agape. "You..." He closed it, thinking, considering. "Why...?" But that didn't seem the right question either. At length, he simply shook his head. The dream. gone? _Gone_ gone? Again, he wasn’t sure whether he wants to cry, to wrap his arms around Loki and thank him, or whether... A pause, as something occurred to him. "The memory of it. Will that be gone too?" he asked, finally, and the question was heavy on his lips.

No. Loki would need to be there in person to affect the brain. He shook his head. "Not now. I can do that later, when I can meet you in the flesh. I could affect your subconscious self to repress it," he said, grimacing, "but you have already been doing that, and it only shows up in your dreams more often."

(‘ _The only true solution is for you to make peace with it_ ,’ Loki didn't say.)

Good. Tony didn't want to lose that memory. It was something that made him who he was – though, however dark it had been, it was merely the pale shadow of darker things that would come later. Nevertheless, it held the deepest meaning. He stood, pushing Loki's hands away from him as something else occurred to him and he frowned. So, he thought, the God had not come because he had any special interest in Tony, had not even come because he, Loki, was feeling low. He had some merely to steal away Tony's dreams—more power to him—and that was all. Somehow the truth disappointed him, but then Loki would always disappoint him, wouldn't he? So much potential and he wasted it on petty rivalries. Nevertheless, Tony beckoned him with one hand, not bothering to look back as he descended down the porch stairs to stand at the edge of the field, the rain pelting against his already soaked shirt, his hair clinging to the outlines of his face, eyes never leaving the edge of the forest, the exact spot where the paramedics would reemerge shortly. He blinked, and in the span of a second his eyes closed, he saw it all – a jagged, sudden flurry of memories that tore at him like a thousand paper cuts.

"I wanted to get away," he said, voice shuddering but steady. "So I ran. And she—" he choked on it, but it came back out as a laugh, "haha – she actually came looking for me. Because, fuck, what was I doing out in this storm. I was only eight. Where the hell was I going to go?" Another laugh, this one nearly manic. "And I heard her voice. I heard—" He tries not to double over with it. The laughing is all that's saving him from breaking, and inwardly he curses Loki, and outwardly too as a little _fuck_ escapes under his breath – curses him for making him remember all the little details, because the whole isn't possible without them.

Loki stood silently, watching Stark crumble. And if he had been any other enemy, he would have enjoyed it, but not Stark. Not Stark who was smart, and knew him, and had almost, _almost_ , seen through him ("There is no version of this where you come out on top," and yes, Tony, that was the _point_ , wasn't it?). Not Stark, who was a worthy adversary, who Loki could _respect_. Not him. And suddenly he couldn't take it anymore.

"Shut up," he says, his voice barely above a whisper. But Stark is too busy laughing hysterically to hear him, so he shouts. "Shut up!" and he _flies_ over and clings to him, holding Stark's face to his chest, holding _him_. "I think I know what happens now, shh, there's no need to tell me."

Tony gave a shudder as Loki held him, though his arms hung limp at his sides and he shook his head against the God's chest. Those strong, chilling arms had turned him away from the spectacle, but he knew Loki could still see it. And he needed to know. A deep, ragged breath, and then the words that hurt the most, words that break on his tongue like rock candy, but their taste is bitter acid. 

"She had a weak heart. Damnit, she shouldn't have been out. I was fucking fine." But no, he hadn't been fine. He had been anything but. The thunder had terrified him, almost as much as it frightened Loki now. "Sh—She collapsed." Another laugh, quick, beyond his control. "And I—" He fell completely still, completely silent. The sound of Loki's heartbeat was strong against his ear. The hands that held him were lifelines. His breathing slowed to a steady rhythm. And finally, he whispered, "In a minute, they're going to wheel her out. And..." The little boy, clutching his mother's hand. "They'll take her." To the hospital. "And by then..." Cold, dead eyes staring sidelong from where his cheek rested against Loki's chest, all of the emotion stripped from him by the memory of the first person he hadn't saved. "It'll be... too late..."

Loki was burning with questions—Why had you ran? What about your father?—and petty platitudes—It wasn't your fault. It was her choice. You had no way of knowing—but he knew, from experience, that neither would be welcome, so he just held Stark tighter, rubbing his back, trying to shield him from his memory. And this had tormented this man for... how long? Since he was child, at least. Did he even get to speak with her before she went?

(He saw Tony’s terror and remembered getting lost once at some point during early adolescence, when he and Thor had not been speaking to each other on account of Thor preferring that _harlot_ Sif over Loki, and Loki had retaliated by cutting off her hair and spelling her so it would not grow again. After he had tricked the dwarves into making her a wig—and Gungnir for Odin, and Mjölnir for Thor, and the boar and the boat and the ring, and nothing for himself—and he had had his mouth sown shut as punishment, he had stolen into a forest and had ended up in Alfheim, during Beltane. He lost his virginity to a man three times his size that night, and never told anybody, ashamed of his ergi. He had never been so scared before, and yet no one had come for him. When he had returned, bruised and bleeding between the legs, no one had even noticed, and they had chalked up his unwillingness to see anybody to his inability to talk. They hadn't cared.)

He cradled Tony's head close as he heard the men in white coming, carrying a stretcher with the woman on it. A simple comfort, as he saw the child, walking—tripping—after the men with the stretcher, forgotten in the confusion. He saw him watch them load his mother into the ambulance and leave him behind in the rain. ("Your mommy will be just fine, you'll see!" one of the men told the boy. Lie.) 

He saw the boy wait, alone, and then give up and go into the house.

Tony's breathing was tight, his chest was tight, everything about him locked into that memory, into that horrible night. Hands, trembling, reached up and grasped desperately at Loki's back as the remembrance rocked him to his very core. Standing there, hours in the cold and in the dark – the time sped up for the sake of the dream. Not being allowed to go to the hospital when the call finally arrived. His father, refusing to come downstairs. 

(Tony would work out the reason later – Howard Stark knew he was responsible for her death, knew that the altercation in the kitchen had really been the nail in the coffin.) 

Two weeks later, the mistress was revealed—“Tony, meet your new mother, you know Susan, right?”—and life continued on as if the funeral had never happened. Hushed, of course, the dark secrets of the Stark family always kept quiet so the media wouldn't be all over them. Tony had always blamed himself, for running away, for making her come after him, and his father had never cared to tell him otherwise, or perhaps felt too guilty himself to.

The dream was beginning to fade, the sirens wailing off into the distance and being absorbed by silence. And a sudden, panicked thought occurred to Tony, as his hands tightened around Loki's. Fuck. This wasn't how it was going to end. It couldn't be. One of the most raw, painful memories of his childhood, lying bare for the other to see. Hands that cradled his head and seemed to _understand_. He didn't want Loki to let go, not ever, and it was selfish because they were _enemies_ and enemies didn't do this, didn't hold one another through the nightmares, didn't fucking _understand_. You weren't supposed to feel safe in an enemie's arms. And yet, right in that moment, Tony felt about the safest he had in a very, very long time. Maybe since before this stupid storm.

 "Don't go," he whispered, and the words, the eyes that met Loki's, were desperate and pleading.

And _oh_ , when was the last time someone had asked Loki to stay? To help them weather the storm? "I won't," he choked out, clinging to Stark. He had this much honor, at least, not to shatter this unspoken truce, this fragile, brittle bond. Who better to hold you up than your best enemy, your mirror image, the one who knew you best and understood you the most? "I will stay until you wake, I can promise you that much," he added, voice shaky with emotion, and kissed Tony chastely on the lips; a thing of comfort, a promise sealed. The pillar holding him up, clinging back.

That kiss undid Tony, exposed him raw, like a nerve, and he gripped tight to Loki, nails digging into his arm, one hand encircling and grasping at his back to close the gap between them. It was not a passionate kiss, no, and he did not try to deepen it, he merely savored the feel of the other's mouth against his, that intoxicating aroma of flowers, the pale luminescence of his skin. The dream fell away, bit by bit, until all that remained was rain and the dark sky above, and he started to close his eyes. A single tear, intermingled with the falling raindrops that caressed it, slid down his cheek, and when he finally broke away to catch his breath, he pressed his face into the God's chest and simply stood there in the downpour with him, with Rock of Ages, with Shield's #1 Most Wanted Supervillain, and felt as though he had finally found—however temporary—a home there in Loki's arms.

Loki cupped Tony's face, drying the tear—he could tell it was that and not just rainwater; this was the logic of dreams—with a swipe of his thumb. The rain washed away all color, he saw, and the land they were standing on got narrower and narrower, as the stuff outside a diminishing radius simply ceased existing, vanishing into the ether. He simply held Tony closer, resting his head on his, closing his eyes.

Then, gradually, the light behind his eyelids faded and his arms grew empty, holding nothing. Then he had no arms or eyelids anymore. He didn't return to his body, though he knew where it was. Emotional dreams were very filling, and he had enough energy to travel the world as a ghost for a while.

Soon he would find another nightmare to haunt.

(And Stark would have no memory of this dream.)


End file.
